Re-Envisioning Suburban Corridors : Intensifying Markham with Incremental Metropolitanism

Expanding sprawl into the Greenbelt around the GTHA or further concentrating development in the expensive inner core will consume immense economic and environmental resources, will not solve Toronto’s housing and affordability crisis, or create lively communities. Urban intensification theories support the idea that the GTHA’s ‘Inner Ring’ of post-war suburbs can provide significant opportunities for housing infill while providing qualitative improvements to the urban experience of the local communities already there. This thesis, contextualized in one of these early lower-density suburbs of Markham, looks for opportunities within the existing suburban footprint for serviced but underutilized land to provide more affordable housing, street edges retrofitted for pedestrian orientation, lively communities, and intensification along the existing arterial infrastructure. This thesis uses the framework of existing low-density post-WWII neighbourhoods to test how we might create enlivened and walkable neighbourhoods that are more supportive of their emergent multicultural demographic through architecture, programming, landscape, and road infrastructure interventions.<p></p>